The Most Amazing Thing

I love my job, really. Part of the being on the JET program is that I am an assistant teacher, so although I teach the lessons, there is always a Japanese person who helps me translate or give directions. Most of my teachers are awesome people who speak English relatively well. Except for one teacher. Ito sensei. I'm not even sure you can call him a teacher. He doesn't ever have a lesson planned and most of the time the majority of the students are either asleep or text messaging unashamedly. It's pretty comical and depressing all at once.

So, every two weeks I have the pleasure of "teaching" with this man. Let me say in his defense, however, that although he is unorganized and weird and sometimes I question his personal hygiene- he is a sweet man at heart. It's just hard to see it. BUT... today in class we were reading about the cultural differences between America and Japan. One difference is that publicly blowing your nose in Japan is considered impolite.

NOTE: Let me just say also that in Japan, verbs are memorized in trios. "Sing, sang, sung," for example, teaching the present, past, past progressive (I think?!) tenses of a verb.

So anyway, back to blowing your nose, Ito sensei did the most amazing thing today. He began to explain the following verb conjugation pattern to the students...

"Blow, blew, blung."

I didn't have the heart to correct him, but I couldn't help but crack a smile. I mean, BLUNG?!?!

Gotta go- I haven't blung my nose is a while, I think it's time I did that.